CHAPTER XXI.
We Spend a Couple of Days at a Michigan Man’s Ranch in Darkest Africa—Pa and the Cowboys Take a Bath—After Smoking about 50 Cigars—Pa Told What Cowards Lions and Tigers Were—Pa Walked up to a Lion and Gave Him a Cut with a Whip.
We have spent a comple of days at the Michigan man’s ranch in Darkest Africa, where he has brought civilization right into the Jungle, and after spending six months with negro savages and wild animals, and menagerie people, it has been the most enjoyable two days I ever knew.
It is good sometimes to see ourselves as others see us, and not having looked into a mirror for half a year, we found that we were about the most disreputable looking tourists that ever came in sight of beds with linen sheets on, and pillows.
I noticed that the family of the Michigan man and the servants looked at us with suspicion, and turned up their noses at us, but I never realized what it was all about until they showed us to our rooms that night, when I saw myself in a mirror, and found that my face and hands were black with dirt and smoke, my clothes were greasy and patched with buckskin patches, sewed on with strips of rawhide, and my torn coat was pinned together with thorns. I could see Pa and the cowboy all the time, and knew that they looked like tramps, but I thought I was all right.
The Michigan man showed us to our rooms, after Pa and the cowboy had drank a few quarts of highballs, and they were going to go to bed with their clothes on, but I knew they would ruin the beds if they did, so I insisted that we all get in the bath tubs and take our semi-annual bath, and as the man left us he said we could find clothes to put on in the morning, in a closet, and toleave our clothes out in the hall and he would have a servant take them away with the tongs and burn them in the furnace.
That sobered Pa and the cowboy a little, and they decided to try the baths.
Well, we didn’t do a thing to the running water, and before we retired we had washed ourselves so clean, with real soap, the first we had seen since we left Germany, that Pa and the cowboy had to be introduced to each other, and I was so clean that I didn’t know myself, and we put on pajamas that we found in the room, and crawled into the clean beds and slept till morning, after putting all of our clothes out of the room, to purify the air.
In the morning we dressed up in the clothes the Michigan man told us we would find in the closet, and such a transformation was never seen before.
Pa found a pair of gray pants and a frock coat, and a silk hat, and when he was dressedand had on a white shirt he looked like a senator from South Carolina.
The cowboy found a golf suit, with short pants, long socks, and putty leggins, and a Tam o’ Shanter cap, and he looked like an escaped Scotchman, while I found a Buster Brown suit that fit me, and all I wanted was a dog to be complete, and we went down to breakfast, and made a hit, the family acting as though they were proud to have us in their midst.
During breakfast they all drew Pa out, and he told them of his experiences capturing wild animals in Africa, and exploring the country, and being made king of a tribe, and they called Pa “Your Highness,” and Pa lied enough about his adventures to send him over the road for disorderly conduct.
The women drew out the cowboy, and he lied some on his own account, and the children got me to going, and you know how it is with me when I get to going.
When the breakfast was over we were all heroes, and Pa pulled out a handful of uncut diamonds and spread them on the table by his plate, and gave each one a diamond as big as a hickory nut, and left a lot of smaller ones on the table with the bread crumbs for the servants, and when we left the table the whole family bowed low to us, and stood back until the king and the cowboy and I had passed out on to the veranda.
Gee, but they seemed to think King Edward wouldn’t be ace high to Pa, and Pa swelled up so I thought he might bust.
Pa Swelled Up So I Thought He Might Bust.
Pa Swelled Up So I Thought He Might Bust.
Pa Swelled Up So I Thought He Might Bust.
After smoking some fifty cigars, Pa told of what cowards lions and tigers were, and how he could take a riding whip and chase a lion up a tree, and the Michigan man proposed to have an exhibit of his wild animals, which he kept in his private forest outside of the clearing. He had a race track in the clearing next to the forest, and told Pa that every morning his herders turned a lot of lions, giraffes, rhinoceroses and zebras intothe track, and the family chased them around the track in automobiles, and Pa said he would like to enter into such a race, and the man ordered the herders to turn in the animals.
The cowboy wanted a saddle horse and a lariat rope, and they fixed him out, and when the herders announced that the animals were on the track all right, we got into the waiting autos, the man and Pa lit cigars and sat on the front seat with the chauffeur, and some of us got in the back seats and started out.
When the animals saw us coming they started down the home stretch, and the auto gave chase, and we yelled and fired guns in the air, and the chauffeur put a charge of bird shot into the hind hams of a lion that didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry, and the lion turned on us, and Pa told the chauffeur to stop and he would settle with the lion.
Pa got out with a horse whip and startedfor the lion, which gave a roar like distant thunder, and as I looked at Pa with the frock coat and silk hat, walking towards the lion I thought that was the last of Pa, and begged him to come back, but he said, “Never you mind me, I have seen lions before,” and Pa walked up to the lion and gave him a cut with the whip, and yelled, “Get back into the jungle, you Tom Cat.”
Well, really, that lion ought to have turned and put his tail between his legs and galloped for the woods, but Pa had made a mistake in his lion, for the animal went up to Pa and took a mouthful of his pants, and shook him like a dog would shake a rat, and Pa yelled for them to take away their lion if they didn’t want the animal injured.
The animal rolled Pa over on the ground in the dust, chewed his silk hat, and Pa got loose and made a rush for the auto and crawled under it to fix something, and just then the cowboy came along on a pony andthrew his lariat over the lion’s head and pulled him away across the track, and Pa came out from under the machine and took a big monkey-wrench and started again for the lion, bareheaded, and so mad he fairly frothed at the mouth, after he saw the lion was choked nearly to death, and then Pa mauled the apparently dead lion until the cowboy dismounted from the pony and gave his lariat rope back.
Pa gave the lion a couple of kicks, and got back into the auto, and the Michigan man patted him on the back and said, “Old man, you are a king of beasts, sure enough;” and Pa said, “O, I don’t know; I never did like a cowardly lion, no how.”
We chased some more animals around the track, and the Michigan man said he hoped the toothless old lion would not die, as he was saving him for Roosevelt to practice on when he came to the ranch after the 4th of March.
The cowboy went across the field where atame giraffe was grazing in a tree top, and took the saddle off his pony and put it on the giraffe, and we run up to where he was, and the Michigan man asked him what he was going to do, and he said he was going to ride the giraffe, as he had ridden almost everything that walked on four legs except a giraffe.
The Michigan man told him he had better leave the giraffe out of his repertoire, because a giraffe was mighty uncertain, but the cowboy got the saddle on, and climbed into it, and then the trouble began.
The giraffe didn’t have any bridle on, and no mane to hold on to, and he was built so that the saddle slipped down by his rump, and when the animal turned around and saw he had the cowboy where he wanted him, he started off towards the forest on a hop, skip and a jump, kicking up his heels like a bucking broncho, and the last we saw of the expedition the giraffe had jumped over a wire fence and took to the woods, with the cowboydangling by one stirrup, swearing in the Wyoming dialect.
The Giraffe Didn’t Have Any Bridle On—and No Mane to Hold On To.
The Giraffe Didn’t Have Any Bridle On—and No Mane to Hold On To.
The Giraffe Didn’t Have Any Bridle On—and No Mane to Hold On To.
Then we went back to the house to play golf, and the Michigan man sent some servants into the woods with a strecher to bring in the remains of the cowboy.
As we dismounted at the veranda, Pa lit a cigarette and said to the man, “You certainly have all the comforts of a home here, and all the facilities for enjoyment that anybody has outside of a traveling menagerie, except draw poker.”
“We can fix you all right on the draw poker,” said the Michigan man.
“Boy, bring the chips and the cards, and let me know when they find the remains of Mr. Cowboy,” and they began to play poker, and I went out to see them milk a Jersey cow.